Second Half Woes

[ulforlife]

I'm not sure but I think we were winning at half. I may be wrong. But it looks to me like we may have had a lead at half time. So we had a better first half, when compared to the second half. You with me here? So this is why we are speaking in this manner. Because at the end of the first half, not the second half, we were winning the game. At the end of the second half, we were not winning the game. Did that make sense? So, we were winning, then not winning. I hope that helped you out.

I don't remember saying we were losing at halftime. We were outplayed and outscored 10-0 in the first quarter. You think that is good? I sure don't. Therefore I am saying we played one good quarter

I do realize that being up going into the second half we had the opportunity to close out the win and failed miserably so I think maybe that's what you meant. My apologies

igeaux.mobi

[Turbine]

_ Actually it's 105-21 in the second half. _

I will take a score any way I can find it but it is troubling that (through five games) there have only been "2" second half scores by the offense. The other score special teams.

Equally troubling is how there has not been a single sustained scoring drive in the second half.

A 60 yard draw by Masson (TD) vs Arkansas State

A 60 yard Masson to Lawson (TD) vs North Texas

A 97 yard kickoff return by Daryl Surgent (TD) vs Oklahoma State

[Just1More]

_ UL only played one good quarter I don't know why y'all are pointing to the second half

igeaux.mobi _

Quarter? They only had good downs and bad downs. And technically, some guys played well on downs that resulted in poor outcomes and others played poorly in downs that resulted in good outcomes. They had more good downs in the 2nd quarter.

I have to laugh that our best work was at the very end of the second quarter... going into halftime... and our worst work was at the beginning of the third quarter. All of these moron Monday morning quarterbacks are yapping about how we "didn't adjust at halftime". What a bunch of clueless morons. Our staff was supposed to "adjust" to start the second half? Ha! Now I know why we can't fan our way out of a wet paper bag... our fanbase is stupid.

[Turbine]

The game of football is a chess match you have to be able to "adjust" on the fly.

If there was ever a game where no halftime offensive adjustments were called for it was Saturday against OSU.

You can't go into halftime after your most successful quarter of the year automatically assuming the opponent will be successful in countering what you did. If you make changes based on what changes you "think" (without seeing) they will doing the second half you are raising the odds of shooting yourself in the foot.

In other words you would be out coaching yourself.

Having said that any good coach will have contingency plans based on what he sees in the flow of the game.

jmo

[Just1More]

If there was ever a game where no halftime offensive adjustments were called for it was Saturday against OSU.

That is correct Turbine. I think what we saw in the second half was a serious response by a very good OSU team. Also, for everyone hung up on Blackmon and our inability to stop him. Our coverage was good. He is an NFL starter... right now... perhaps a franchise level WR.

What worries me about the next progression of football at UL... coaching, facilities and the like... is the regressing mental stability and comprehension skills of our outspoken fans. Many are nothing more than a bag full of stale complaints. They were almost more concerned about the Roosta Dance than they were about a good showing on the field of play.

Is the lack of success in football soured our fanbase so much so that they no longer have the ability to use good reasoning skills? There are solutions to our circumstances that simply have not been employed. Our outspoken fans rattle off more trivial, non-impact, bottomless claims and solutions to problems than I've ever seen in my life.

Misery's ugly cousin, Insanity, is lurking in the shadows of our fanbase.

[Crackleton]

_ ...fan our way out of a wet paper bag... _

Priceless.

[BabbForHeisman]

Is the lack of success in football soured our fanbase so much so that they no longer have the ability to use good reasoning skills? _

Stop talking like this, you're going to confuse people!

[HOUCajun]

That is correct Turbine. I think what we saw in the second half was a serious response by a very good OSU team. Also, for everyone hung up on Blackmon and our inability to stop him. Our coverage was good. He is an NFL starter... right now... perhaps a franchise level WR.

What worries me about the next progression of football at UL... coaching, facilities and the like... is the regressing mental stability and comprehension skills of our outspoken fans. Many are nothing more than a bag full of stale complaints. They were almost more concerned about the Roosta Dance than they were about a good showing on the field of play.

Is the lack of success in football soured our fanbase so much so that they no longer have the ability to use good reasoning skills? There are solutions to our circumstances that simply have not been employed. Our outspoken fans rattle off more trivial, non-impact, bottomless claims and solutions to problems than I've ever seen in my life.

Misery's ugly cousin, Insanity, is lurking in the shadows of our fanbase.

While I agree with almost everything you said, Remember its just the lunatic fringe that wastes time on message boards. At least I hope so...

igeaux.mobi

[ragin91cajun]

_ That is correct Turbine. I think what we saw in the second half was a serious response by a very good OSU team. Also, for everyone hung up on Blackmon and our inability to stop him. Our coverage was good. He is an NFL starter... right now... perhaps a franchise level WR.

What worries me about the next progression of football at UL... coaching, facilities and the like... is the regressing mental stability and comprehension skills of our outspoken fans. Many are nothing more than a bag full of stale complaints. They were almost more concerned about the Roosta Dance than they were about a good showing on the field of play.

Is the lack of success in football soured our fanbase so much so that they no longer have the ability to use good reasoning skills? There are solutions to our circumstances that simply have not been employed. Our outspoken fans rattle off more trivial, non-impact, bottomless claims and solutions to problems than I've ever seen in my life.

Misery's ugly cousin, Insanity, is lurking in the shadows of our fanbase. _

Ok I'll stipulate to your no need for adjustments at halftime argument. Passing the ball worked the whole first half. Why not do it until it fails? But what about adjustments within the context of the third quarter. It was obvious from the second Masson threw that interception that OSU had decided to sit back and dare us to run the ball in the second half. It wasn't a bad play call. That route would have been wide open in the first half, but OSU adjusted at halftime. They saw our quarterback had the best quarter of his life and decided he was not gonna be the one to beat them. I'm seriously just asking your opinion on this issue. By the way, you can call me stupid or a bad fan or whatever else you want;I don't care. The fact is when UL starts announcing attendances of 9,000 or 10,000 at the end of the season and there's really about 5,000 people in the stands. I'll be one of those 5,000 people.

[zephyr]

_ Ok I'll stipulate to your no need for adjustments at halftime argument. Passing the ball worked the whole first half. Why not do it until it fails? But what about adjustments within the context of the third quarter. It was obvious from the second Masson threw that interception that OSU had decided to sit back and dare us to run the ball in the second half. It wasn't a bad play call. That route would have been wide open in the first half, but OSU adjusted at halftime. They saw our quarterback had the best quarter of his life and decided he was not gonna be the one to beat them. I'm seriously just asking your opinion on this issue. By the way, you can call me stupid or a bad fan or whatever else you want;I don't care. The fact is when UL starts announcing attendances of 9,000 or 10,000 at the end of the season and there's really about 5,000 people in the stands. I'll be one of those 5,000 people. _

I too, tend to get aggravated when people make general assumptions about things that the staff didn't or did do without truly having an idea. However, to minimize the importance of making halftime adjustments is equally rediculous. True, it should not be seen as the only time to make adjustments, haltime that is. However, in this game that is exactly when we should have made them along with the middle of the first quarter (Which we successfully did). We were riding a wave of momentum going into half obviously as we had just scored 21 points in the second quarter to take the lead over a much favored team. Why, because they hadn't run the ball like they wanted to and never put pressure on Masson which is why he tore them up in the first half. They made the adjustments to blitz a bit more and put more pressure on him which they forced some turnovers along with some incompletions that ultimately stalled drives. From our standpoint, we didn't go in assuming they would do some things differently and alter some packages such as putting either an extra TE to block, chipping with a running back or running some misdirection tosses and screens to possibly counter any blitzes they would throw at us. We had to figure that they were not going to continue playing soft zone and they were going to blitz and make us read and react much faster. Alternatively, we did not do the same. Weeden was beginning to warm up and we did not blitz much at all as we were afraid of giving up the deep ball and rightfully so. Guys like Blackmon and Hunter and Anyiam, you can't really do much to completely shut them down. You have to cut the head off the dragon in hopes the rest of the body will not operate and we should have attacked the QB more. It was only a matter of time before their firepower caught up to us but I don't think we ran the screens as much as we should have.